According to John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, the trillion-dollar investment cycle into generative artificial intelligence is just the start. More importantly, it has started to pay off, too. With tech companies all set to invest roughly $1 trillion in capital expenditures for AI infrastructure, investors have been worried whether businesses are spending more than they may get out of it. However, Belton believes that initial investments are already yielding results.
“This is a trillion-dollar investment cycle… Adoption and usage is really only now starting to hit this very steep part of the so-called S-curve, another two and a half years after the launch of ChatGPT…The largest investors in AI infrastructure are generating the most attractive returns today.”
Belton further highlighted two reasons for his confidence in the potential of artificial intelligence. First, he stated that the cost of technology is coming down while AI capabilities are improving. Second, agentic revenue is already close to 10% next year, which is a “big, exciting” new area for growth. Now that AI is getting more accessible and cheaper, its potential is only starting to unfold.
“As AI is becoming cheaper and more capable, the vision is that it’s just going to be used in more and more corporate productivity initiatives.”
For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds. The hedge fund data is as of Q1 2025.
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10. C3.ai, Inc. (NYSE:AI)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 24
C3.ai, Inc. (NYSE:AI) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, Univation Technologies, a global leader in petrochemical technology licensing, and C3 AI, have entered into a strategic cooperation agreement to deliver enterprise AI solutions for advanced predictive maintenance for the petrochemical industry.
Under the agreement, Univation will license and distribute the C3 AI software that is already in use at Dow, Univation’s parent company. It will also provide technical help to support initial implementation and software enhancements for customers as needed in the future.
Univation’s new C3 AI–powered offering leverages Univation’s deep industrial knowledge with the proven success of C3 AI tools already used at Dow. The said technology is already in use across more than 50 steam cracker furnace operations within Dow’s global petrochemical facilities.
Together, the C3 Agentic AI Platform, the C3 AI Reliability application, and Univation’s deep expertise will provide an enterprise-scale AI solution that identifies equipment issues proactively, maximizes uptime, and augments operational performance for steam cracker operations.
“As the trusted leader in predictive maintenance, we’ve turned Enterprise AI into a core capability for modern industrial operations. Our work with Dow sets the standard for how industrial companies can use AI to drive efficiency, reduce costs, and optimize performance. And this collaboration with Univation will accelerate adoption of this proven, domain-specific AI application across the broader petrochemical industry and support modernization across the market by delivering real, measurable benefits of AI at scale.”
-Ed Abbo, Chief Technology Officer, C3 AI.
9. Arm Holdings plc (NASDAQ:ARM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 42
Arm Holdings plc (NASDAQ:ARM) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, Guggenheim analyst John DiFucci raised the price target on the stock from $147.00 to $187.00, maintaining a “Buy” rating. The firm cited increased visibility in Arm’s license revenue behind the rating affirmation, which is anticipated to result in royalty revenue growth over the next several years.
According to analyst DiFucci, 2025 has seen software stocks moving with broad economic sentiment instead of company fundamentals. Even though security stocks outperformed software on the whole, their underlying growth has slowed except in areas such as Identity and Data security.
The firm further stated that even though there is some positive momentum backed by retail trading and FX tailwinds, corporate IT demand is weak, which is why earnings may fall short. This is why the firm has raised the price target only modestly, based on expected higher revenue growth.
8. Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 56
Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, the South China Morning Post reported that tech giant has braved entry into the highly competitive field of Chinese open-source artificial intelligence (AI) systems by making its flagship Ernie 4.5 models available for download.
According to the report, Baidu has open-sourced 10 variants from its Ernie 4.5 multimodal model family. Its open-source models are now accessible from Hugging Face, the world’s largest open-source AI community.
The company also announced open-sourcing development toolkits for ERNIE 4.5, featuring industrial-grade capabilities, resource-efficient training and inference workflows, and multi-hardware compatibility.
Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) is a Chinese internet giant and AI pioneer, known for its noteworthy investments in artificial intelligence technology and its position as the dominant search engine within the country.
7. Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 69
Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, Palantir, a leading provider of AI systems, and Accenture Federal Services, a U.S. federal technology company and subsidiary of Accenture LLP (NYSE: ACN), announced a landmark strategic partnership to help federal government agencies revolutionize their operations with artificial intelligence.
Under the partnership, Accenture Federal has been named a Palantir preferred implementation partner for U.S. federal government customers. The two companies will team up to deploy commercial-grade, AI-powered solutions to US government agencies. Their goal is to improve key operations, make better decisions, and increase operational resilience.
The collaboration also includes a partnership between Accenture Federal Services and Palantir to train and certify Accenture Federal’s Data & AI team of 1,000 professionals on Palantir Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). This will be done to deliver top-quality automation solutions for the federal government.
“What makes this partnership so uniquely powerful is Accenture’s expertise working with the federal government and our ability to bring commercial capabilities to government solutions, combined with Palantir’s deep experience in government software. Together, we will harness the ever-growing power of AI to help the federal government succeed in its critical mission to modernize and reinvent its operations—with stronger data flows, transparency and resilience—to better serve warfighters, citizens and all its stakeholders.”
-Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture.
6. Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 97
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, Stifel upgraded the stock to “Buy” from hold and raised its price target to $250 from $180. The firm said in its upgrade of Oracle that it sees cloud acceleration. Analyst Brad Reback quoted the company’s recent dramatic increase in capital expenditure and RPO (Remaining Performance Obligation) gains, which back growth expectations of the management for the company’s Cloud Infrastructure and SaaS-Apps businesses. These gains should generate accelerating revenue increases in the coming years, the firm noted.
Even though the higher capital spending will lead to additional near-term gross-margin compression, the analyst added that there is “no question this management team is extremely adept at managing expenses.”
They believe that sustainable Cloud growth and operating expense discipline should allow Oracle to overcome the revenue mix shift headwinds and support accelerating EPS growth in FY27 and beyond.
“While Oracle continues to benefit from escalating Infrastructure demand, we remain more cautious due to FCF implications given the company’s need for significant capital investment to sustain this growth.”
5. Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 104
Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, William Blair reiterated the stock as “Outperform,” stating that it is sticking with the stock but sees a “bumpy road ahead.”
The firm is encouraging investors to adopt a tactical view on the stock based on its autonomous driving and robotaxi business. It is bullish on the stock considering Tesla’s transformation from an automaker to an AI-driven mobility platform, a move which has the potential to open “up a new trillion-dollar total addressable market (TAM).”
“We fundamentally believe in Tesla’s long-term solution of neural nets and vision only, but acknowledge it opens up attack vectors for the inevitable hiccups to come.”
However, the firm has also acknowledged that the company’s core business is facing headwinds. This is why it has reduced its second-quarter delivery estimate to an estimated 355,000 units, below the consensus forecast of 385,000.
Some other risks Tesla has been facing include the cancellation of the Model 2 hatchback, lower sales in China and Europe, and intensifying competition from domestic rivals
“Our analysis reveals that Tesla’s valuation is increasingly dependent on the robotaxi business. … .We fundamentally believe in Tesla’s long-term solution of neural nets and vision only, but acknowledge it opens up attack vectors for the inevitable hiccups to come. We are encouraging investors to use bumps along the road tactically.”
4. Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 158
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, Jefferies reiterated the stock as “Buy” and raised its price target to $315 per share from $300. The rating affirmation reflects the firm’s optimism in the AI and networking sectors. It believes that Broadcom boasts a strong hold in the AI application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) market, focusing on prominent developers of large language models.
“The AI ASIC message has stayed consistent: they are targeting major customers building their own LLMsDespite recent concerns, AVGO was clear that they are still deeply engaged with the same customer base and don’t see any future share loss. In the long run, AVGO sees seven major LLM players worldwide (five in US) as the target customer base for ASICs.”
-Jefferies analysts, led by Blayne Curtis, in a Monday investor note.
The firm also sees potential in Broadcom’s networking solutions.
“The battle has heated up for the scale-up opportunity with Nvidia’s (NVDA) NVLink still the leader, but both AVGO and Astera Labs (ALAB)/UALink working on competing solutions,” Curtis noted. “The opportunity is expected to be 5-10x larger than scale-out and AVGO expects to have solutions using both Tomahawk and Jericho.”
The company is also set to ramp up Google’s Ironwood TPU during the second half of 2025.
“On the supply chain side, AVGO plans to keep HBM in-house to prevent anything that could go wrong and ensure responsibility for the final product,” Curtis said. “HBM4 is on the roadmap but no vendor decisions have been made.”
Broadcom is a technology company uniquely positioned in the AI revolution owing to its custom chip offerings and networking assets.
3. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 159
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, MoffettNathanson reiterated the stock as “Sell” as the firm braces for a difficult earnings report for Apple in late July.
The firm cited several issues leading to the sell rating, ranging from tariffs and China discounting to AI strategy and even the potential fallout from regulatory rulings.
“In the U.S., it appears that our anticipation of a pull-forward of demand to beat potential price increases on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) products in response to tariffs has been borne out,”
The firm said this, noting that iPhone unit volumes in April and May were up double digits year over year. However, they noted that the revenue may not keep up due to weaker average selling prices.
Apple’s AI positioning, meanwhile, may be promising, but it is still seen as “rudderless in AI.”
“It seems to us, though, that greater uncertainty ought to mean lower multiples. And given the asymmetry of the risks, we’d argue for lower estimates, as well. To date, the market has supplied little of either.”
2. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 212
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 30, Morgan Stanley reiterated the stock as “Overweight.” The firm said that Nvidia remains a top idea at the firm.
“Our view is more constructive – NVIDIA is our Top Pick in semis, as we think that both demand and supply are tracking ahead of the various Taiwanese anecdotes – but we do want to report accurately.”
In other news, The Financial Times reported that Nvidia insiders have sold over $1 billion worth of company stock in the past year. However, there has been a notable uptick in recent trading activity as executives capitalize on surging investor interest in artificial intelligence.
Moreover, for the first time since September, CEO Jensen Huang started selling shares this week. The stock hit a record last Wednesday, reclaiming the crown of the world’s most valuable company. Its gains reflect the U.S. stock market’s return to the “AI trade”.
1. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 273
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. On June 28, The Information reported that Meta is hiring four more OpenAI artificial intelligence researchers. As per the report, Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren are the researchers who have each agreed to join.
Earlier, the company had hired Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai, who were working in OpenAI’s Zurich office. The move marks Meta’s push to hire more researchers from OpenAI, supercharging Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts in superintelligence.
While we acknowledge the potential of META as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than META and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 10 AI Stocks Getting Wall Street’s Attention and 10 AI Stocks in the Spotlight.
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